Bravo's Work of Art has gotten thousands of neophytes talking about—and tuning into—art. So what's the establishment's problem with it?

Call it the art world's guilty pleasure. Bravo's reality show Work of Art: The Next Great Artist is in its second season, though few curators, collectors, or critics will admit they're happy to see it return—even if they've already set their DVRs. "I have a lot of friends who are artists, or work in the art world, and they say this is the show they love to hate," says the show's host, China Chow, a model and long-standing member of New York's art demimonde. (Check out our fashion shoot featuring Chow, "Auto Body," on page 310 of this issue.) "I know people at the Whitney and the Guggenheim who watch the show," she offers. (Jeff Koons, for one, has told her he tunes in.) And they like it? "They're...interested in it. Let's put it that way."

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Work of Art pits 14 young artists against one another in a Lord of the Flies version of art school. Each week, Chow challenges contestants to make a "masterpiece" in a scant 48 hours. (Guernica was done in a day or two, right?) This season, the group includes photo­graphers, sculptors, painters, a street artist, a guy who makes action figures, and a video artist, who collectively seem to possess greater technical skills than last year's ­contenders—despite the fact that several answer to Jersey Shore–worthy nicknames: Tewz! The Sucklord! Dusty! Jazz-Minh! They toil ­to­gether in an enormous open studio, receiving vague encouragement from the show's "mentor," auction-house titan Simon de Pury, who, with his immaculately tailored double-breasted suits and regal bearing, brings to mind a Bond villain, or perhaps a patrician Count Chocula. When the finished pieces are shown, gallery-opening style, the judges—who include Chow, New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, gallerist Bill Powers, and usually a guest artist—beckon a handful of artists over for a crit. Fist-pumps and tears ­ensue, and someone is sent off the island of Manhattan. In the finale, airing December 14, whoever has out-arted the other contestants will get a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum and a $100,000 prize.

Is it possible that the insular and conservative art world, known for its increasingly professionalized schools, ludicrously priced sales, and billionaire oligarchs, is worried that something as crassly populist as a reality show will dilute the brand of "high art"? Do gallerists fear a Work of Art contestant might rocket to fame without needing to have schmoozed The Right People?

Such territorial marking seems to be the primary issue here: the art-world cognoscenti objecting to what they see as the show's Real Housewives–ification of their realm. And when, in this season's first episode, the Work of Art cameras cut to some of its female contestants mildly swooning over Ugo, a tall, bearded, and bescarfed hunk of fromage with a drawing style that pretty much everyone on the program points out looks an awful lot like Keith Haring's work, it's hard to argue that this is the best way to introduce the masses to the finer points of contemporary art. In addition, the reality-show pace hardly allows time for in-depth conversations about the work or for viewers to, y'know, look at the art that is so putatively crucial to the show's outcome (though curious viewers can linger over the works if they visit the show's website).

"If you're not a personality, and if you're not doing work that is easy to reproduce and can be thrown up there on the screen in a way that is memorable, you can't play the game," says Robert Storr, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art who now serves as the dean of the Yale School of Art. "Serious conceptual art, serious painting that doesn't have images in it, art that requires any thought," he abjures, "has no room in this kind of competition."

On the other hand, watching artists make art, seeing how they respond to pressure, and observing their problem-solving (and their meltdowns) makes for fascinating viewing. And Saltz's behind-the-scenes essays about the show's inaugural season and subsequent direct engagement with hundreds of fans online have democratized the conversation in a way the art world has never exactly seen before, demonstrating that "normal" people are ­passionate about talking about art too. "What's thrilling for me," enthuses Saltz, "is that [the show is] an art world without ideology; it's an art world that encourages you to clear your mind and just engage your imagination, and not to worry so much about what your neighbor thinks." Chow agrees, saying Work of Art is "a step in the right direction, to have a little bit more culture out there on a mass level."

Storr isn't having it. "True populism," he says, "would be something that engaged the general public at the highest, rather than the lowest, denominator. It would be something that actually engaged them and wasn't simply a spectacle, and it wouldn't be something you could see and immediately forget thereafter."

Saltz, who received heavy flack from colleagues about his participation in the show—even as the season one finale drew a not-shabby 1.48 million viewers—suggests that critics lighten up. "I think guilty pleasures are wonderful," he says. "The people who think this represents `the end of the art world as we know it' need to get a grip. Pleasure is one of the most important forms of knowledge." As for whether the art world is watching, when I mention how difficult it is getting people from New York City museums to speak on the record about the show, he says, laughing, "Well, they certainly talk to me about it!"